Dreamscapes

I’ve always been fascinated by some of the dreams I awake from, going on back to high school days, and one dream I had in first grade that I still recall, in part.

Most of my dreamlife (when I remember) is filled with intricate plots, imagery, twists and turns, people, places, patterns, symbolic metaphor scenes (at times). In my dreams over the years I have flown by flapping my arms, swam with ease in deep water (I cannot swim), and somewhat like Phil in Groundhog Day said, and I parody: “I’ve been in wars, car accidents, showed up for college finals after having forgotten to attend classes, rode a tricycle 10 miles at night as an adult along a major highway connecting Wilmington and Newark, DE, crawled over the highwires of bridges to get to the toll booth, only to be sent into some chutes-n-ladders maze of rooms with water and tunnels and nonsense obstacles trying to get back to the highway. I’ve been in dorms and discovered secret passages and immense underground tunnel systems that I explore. I’ve been in old houses and go up stairs and discover endless hallways and rooms that have junk in them and I attempt to clean and paint and fix up the whole thing. I’ve showed up to high school marching band and attempted to join the performance, having no idea of the specific song/routine/moves, having not been to practice for over thirty years. I’ve run and hid from invading armies rolling tanks into my hometown and I’ve dreamt I’m giving birth in a public shopping mall. You name it, I’ve probably dreamt it–including that time I dreamed I was eating vanilla ice cream in front of a TV! Every morning I wake up without a scratch on me!!!”

Most dreams I remember or give pause to consider are scenarios (unusual and disguised as they might seem) that arise from my own psyche and repository of theme plots. I have read that dreams are important, whether we remember them or not, because it is our brain’s way of problem-solving and defragmenting our mental and emotional hard drive, so-to-speak.

I once was having a particular issue in a painting I was working on, and somehow dreamed about how to fix the visual problem in a fairly simple way. It seemed unusual that I was wrestling during my sleep with this art issue and actually resolved it and was able to quickly complete the painting in waking reality! I kind of recall which painting it was, but mostly I recall having dreamt the solution to a huge mistake in proportion/perspective without starting all over again.

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This morning I awoke from a dream and have given it some thought while drinking my coffee, preparing for my day. I will write it here, but, this is not a dream I’m going to remember or care about next week or next year or in ten or twenty years. During my lifetime, I occasionally do have such dreams that are burned into my memory and seem to have a distinctive spiritual quality that goes beyond things arising from my own psyche (although those elements are also there).

My dream:
I think I was in an airport. I had been somewhere else, in some room, or maybe on a boat or inside a plane. I was carrying a lot of stuff. One item was my 30 x 36 inch caricature board I use at festivals, being made of two pieces of heavy plywood and hinged to stand under a tent. I was carrying this very heavy object along with other odds and ends that I needed, to get to a caricature gig in California. Yes, I had taken a plane with these objects for a two hour caricature job in California, and I was thinking to myself, “this is terrible…I’m going to be late for the job, and I’m not sure that what I’ll be paid will be worth it. I keep dropping all these things I was carrying, but it seemed the most import object was this big sign, and it was the very heaviest thing. I was alone in those tunnels that connect the incoming flight to the inside airport gate. I opened the door, and then it felt like I was at Point Mallard waterpark in Alabama. There was a pool guy there who had cleared the pool because of a tornado warning. In the dream, I saw a huge, big empty pool but beyond it, in the river, there were a few people kayaking. I wanted the guy to somehow help me/direct me with all my stuff, but he was too busy with the empty pool situation and held up his hand for me to wait. I thought to myself, “Is there a tornado coming or not?” In the dream, there seemed to be some confusion over those people out there beyond the ropes who were blissfully kayaking…and me…I just wanted to get to California with all my stuff and not be late to set up for the gig. I kept worrying that I was really going to disappoint my booking agent.”

I don’t think I need any particular insight to understand that my dream was one of immense frustration, worry, difficulties, obstacles, aloneness and encounters with people who were not in a position to help me figure out how to carry all that stuff through some weird airport gate that had a room that was a waterpark pool and river, and show up somewhere in California set up and ready to draw on time…it’s your basic impossible-feeling situation that no one understands! (And add in the absurdity of why I would need my caricature pricing board for a booked gig…)

As for other more significant dreams I’ve had, I may write more about these at some point. I did once write here about the Pear Tree Dream. And there is another dream I had in August 2020 that I now believe is some type of companion dream (in imagery and possible meaning, spiritually) to that dream.

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Some might wonder, why speak of dreams when there is already enough junk going on in the waking world?

To that, I might point out that two of the most prominent world religions (Judaism and Christianity) are somewhat founded/grounded in part on the significance and written texts relating to accounts of human dreams. In particular, I think of Joseph, who was thrown into a pit by his brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt (which led to most of the Israelite population eventually serving as slaves for many generations, which led to the exodus across the Red Sea into the wilderness, which led to much, much more…which eventually led to the birth of Jesus, and so forth….) after he told his brothers of a dream that he had.

Here is the dream which Joseph had and told his brothers:
Genesis 37:5-11

⁵ Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. ⁶ He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: ⁷ We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”

⁸ His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.

⁹ Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”

¹⁰ When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” ¹¹ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.